Austrian pediatrician and child psychiatrist Hans Asperger first described "autistic psychopathy" in 1944, "a lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversation, intense absorption in a special interest, and clumsy movements." In further study of autistic children as they advanced into adulthood, he concluded that these children perceived as "odd" tend to become overachieving adults and invaluable contributors to society. Now known as Asperger's Syndrome, the childhood symptoms Asperger described were apparently present in the doctor's own childhood, when he had few friends and frequently bored classmates with his obsessive knowledge of poet Franz Grillparzer.